WSJ WTK Series Continues With TagMan And X+1; Nielsen: Time Spent In Social Up 50%; Limelight Buys Delve

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series, which looks at what it calls "spying" by the data-driven digtal ad industry, continues as TagMan GM Jon Baron discusses how his company manages cookies and tags, "We care about tags. (...) Not many people do." Read it. In another WSJ article by Julia Angwin and Emily Steele, the pair look at demand-side platform X+1's targeting technology and summarizes, "Websites are gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself." Read more.

Time Spent Stats

Nielsen released a comparison of "time spent" statistics by Internet users and not surprisingly social network usage has climbed 43% year-over-year to 22.7% of an average Internet users time spent online. Online video and movies remains just below 4% of total time spent. Read more stats.

P&G Ups Ad Spend

MediaNewsDaily's David Goetzl looks at Kantar Media data and writes that P&G has boosted ad spending $1 billion in the last year and adds, "For the fiscal year concluding June 30, global ad spend was as much as $8.7 billion, leading to a 20% jump in impressions, the company said. P&G's ad spending was about 10% of sales -- its usual range -- but higher revenues led to the dollar increase." A Read more.

New Multi-Screen Study

Microsoft Research has released a new study called "Multi-Screen Consumer Insights Research" which will also be available as a webinar with the ANA on August 4. Lots of facts and figures in this including more reasons for brand dollars (and DR for that matter) to come online: "The computer is still seen as an 'informative' (67 percent) and 'productive' (65 percent) engine, but it has lost its purely pragmatic and functional stigma. Instead, it is associated with a wide range of attributes outside the realm of efficiency, including being 'entertaining' (58 percent) and 'fun' (58 percent). It is even more 'fun' than TV (58 percent vs. 48 percent). The computer is about more than getting things done, and Consumers want to be engaged as they interact." Download it here (sign-up required).

Tweet Wars: Jarvis And Murray

Jeff Jarvis, CUNY journalism professor, and Alan Murray, WSJ Deputy Managing Editor, faced off on Twitter over the Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" series. Some sample tweets from Alan Murray and Jeff Jarvis (source: @alansmurray): "Amazed you teach journalism. RT @jeffjarvis: @alansmurray Just more unscientific, unjournalistic unnews from the Journal on this topic"; and an earlier tweet from @alansmurray: "Surprised you've emerged as defender of right to keep users in the dark! RT @jeffjarvis: Another in WSJ COOKIE MADNESS series tonight?" Read more tweets from @jeffjarvis and @alansmurray. Read a round-up on the WSJ article series from David Kaplan of PaidContent.

Machine Learning And RTB

Turn CTO Xuhui Shao focuses on "The Magic of Machine Learning in Real Time" in a column on ClickZ. What he means: "Part of the magic of real-time bidding is found within machine learning. This involves using sophisticated algorithms to "learn" complex patterns based on large amounts of data in order to make optimal advertising decisions." Read more.

Publicis Gets Brazilian Agency

In a release, the ad holding company announced that it has continued its global digital media expansion by acquiring AG2 which "will be aligned with Publicis Modem, the digital arm of the Publicis Worldwide global network, and will be renamed AG2 Publicis Modem." Read more.

DoubleClick Is Everywhere

Search Engine Land's Greg Sterling review a new startup from DoubleClick founder Kevin O’Connor called FindTheBest. Sterling says the new company is "kind of a comparison engine for structured data of all sorts. It’s not an alternative to search per se. In fact it will rely heavily on search and SEO for user discovery. The idea is to provide consumers with an objective way to compare all sorts of information across a range of categories, from colleges to fast food." Read more.

Geolocating While Verifying

Ad verifier Adometry has added new geographic metrics from DigitalElement to its suite of services. In a release, the company announced that it would use DigitialElement's "NetAcuity® software to help customers substantiate that the terms of their ad buys are met and to increase ad effectiveness by showing performance by geography." Read more.

Limelight Buys Delve

Content distribution network infrastructure provider Limelight has purchased Delve Networks for an estimated $10 million according to Jim O'Neill of Fierce Online Video. O'Neill adds, "The combination of Limelight’s distributed computing platform with Delve’s cloud-based video platform give's the CDN's customers a more streamlined workflow. In addition, Delve has patent-pending key technology that can capture rich information about content that, when combined with Limelight’s ad targeting and delivery assets, can offer more relevant and higher CPM rich media advertising." Read more. And, more from the Streaming Media blog. And, read the release.

Heat-Seeking Missles

First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman shares a personal revelation on his RedEye VC blog that successful entrepreneurs are like heat-seeking missles since they "are constantly collecting data -- and constantly looking for bigger and better targets, adjusting course if necessary. And when they find their target, they're able to lock-onto it -- regardless of how crowded the space becomes." Read more.

The Marketing Channel Merge

MDC Partners' Darren Herman notes on his personal blog the buzz around search and display and predicts further innovations: "The trend we are going to see in 2H2010 and certainly in FY2011 is the emergence of these tools within the display, video, and mobile world and combining SEM with them. While I can’t speak for any one tool directly due to confidentiality reasons, we are going to see many of these once SEM-only players move upstream to capture additional ad dollars and to use all-data (search+display+video+mobile, etc) to make better decisions." Read more.

iPad Stats

Mobclix offers iPad stats from data available through its exchange. TechCrunch's Robin Wauters takes a look at the stats which show "that click-through rates for iPad apps are nearly 11 times higher when it concerns rich media video ads in comparison to standard display banner ads." Read more on TechCrunch.

DoubleVerify Re-Brands

A new website and new logo with the tag line "Trust In Advertising" are now available from ad verification firm, DoubleVerify. See it here. (source: @ChrisFRC)